Many students, parents, and counselors have likely sat through a meeting dedicated to “brainstorming”—everyone is invited to share ideas with the group, then discussion and debate ensue, all in the hopes that you’ll get that one great new idea for raising funds, recruiting members, solving an existing challenge, etc. Some of these meetings include guidelines like “Refrain from criticizing initially” designed to encourage participation. I’ve even posted a few here.
But as the Harvard Business Review shares, there’s some pretty compelling research to indicate that teams get better ideas, and more of them, when members are invited to brainstorm alone. And it seems like a pretty low-risk experiment for a group to try, with some potentially big idea payoffs.